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Children's Game is a Visual Novel centering around Eric, a high school senior who has no goal in life and only one passion, the Duel of Shamans TCG (Trading Card Game). Known mostly for his victories in online tournaments, Eric is selected to participate in “The Clash of the Shamans”, a tournament featuring players hand picked by Carico, the company behind Duel of Shamans. Now in the name of play, he and his friends form stronger bonds, endure jerks and parents, and peruse the thrill of victory on the “Battlefield of the Shamans”. Yeah, its a stupid name, we all think so.
I want this game to be an exploration into the life of a TCG player, something akin to SC2VN (http://www.sc2vn.com/) exploring the hardships of participating in tournaments with little to no turn around save scholarship money, free cards, and accolades.
Eric, Age 18:
Bio: Free and got a lost cause, Eric does well in school and makes decent grades but doesn't have a career path he is interested in (much to his mother's dismay). He likes to play the Royal Guards, an Archetype (defined below) based on legendary warriors and weapons from across history that focuses on equipping Summons (defined below) with “Equip Arms” (see Magic in the Glossary.)


Samantha, Age 17:
Eric's only friend at school, Sam doesn't actually play TCG's but she's still the only person at school who is willing to listen to Eric's strategy and deck building ramblings.

Dan, Age 16:
Bio: Eric's best friend. He's overly optimistic and hot headed, a master of the Draco Dawn cards, an archetype based on dragons, it doesn't really draw any real world inspiration. Focuses on Beatdown tactics (defined below).

James Age 18:
Bio: Practically a walking card data base, James is cold and logical, preferring to play the Chess Kingdom archetype which is unsurprisingly based on Chess Pieces and focuses on Control (defined below).
The glossary will be split up into two sections. Terms related to Trading Card Games in general, and terms related to “Duel of Shamans”, the fictional TCG the game revolves around.
TCG- Trading Card Games. Physical (and sometimes digital) games that revolve around using cards to obtain a victory condition.

Beatdown- A strategy that revolves around quickly placing high-power cards on the playing field.

Control- A strategy that revolves around maintaining “tempo” or timing of a duel. Generally used to pace out the game and winning later rather than sooner.

Duel- A single game between two player's. Generally used more in Yu-Gi-Oh.
Duel of Shamans- A fictional Trading Card Game created by the fictional game company Carico. This game is most similar to Yu-Gi-Oh but does include elements from other games like Magic the Gathering.

Archetype- This one is a little complicated. Basically an Archetype is a series of card's with the same art style and effects that revolve around a mechanic. This term is pretty much the same as Yu-Gi-Oh Archetypes. A quick example I'll give is the Morphtronic Archetype from Yu-Gi-Oh, which is a series of small Transformer like robots who have different effects based on if they are in Attack Position or Defense Position.

Summons- Cards that are similar to Monsters from Yu-Gi-Oh or Creatures from Magic the Gathering. These are used to damage the opponent's Health. Once you're opponent's Health reaches 0 you are victorious.

Magic- Most similar to Spells and Traps from Yu-Gi-Oh. Cards that have a variety of effects ranging from damaging the opponent to preventing a card's destruction and just about everything in between. “Equip Arms” are a subset of these cards that, once placed on the field and equipped to a Summon, has a variety of effects varying from increasing damage output to adding effects to a summon.

Over 30 views and no reply, I'm curious as to why.
Does the premise sound boring, or is it that no one really has any questions?
Maybe it's the fact that I don't have a signature or profile pic and that kinda screams "He might bail on this idea." I'll fix that now.
So is there a reason?

Now we are at 75 views and still no responses.
What am I doing wrong?
If you don't play TCG's your feedback is even more important than TCG players because I want to deliver a game that is entertaining to TCG players and non TCG players alike. Even if you don't like the Idea, please let me know.

You're not doing anything wrong.
You might want to change the title of your topic. When I looked at the title of your topic I thought you were asking about games for children, instead of a visual novel entitled Children's Games. Also, I had no idea what TCG meant. When I wrote stuff professionally the FIRST thing my editor told me was "Don't assume your reader will know what an acronym means. Always spell it out the first time you use it in a document."
You might want to consider changing the title to '"Children's Games" a visual novel about trading card game players'.
While I'm not hooked on playing your visual novel, that's not a detraction on your idea, but a personal thing on my part (I don't particularly like stories about teens, and am not interested in trading card games).

Fear not, somebody will play your game. Some people will like it, some won't.

I hope my comments are useful, and that others provide feedback to you.

Adding onto what fleet said, you might want to elaborate on the other terms you specified in the thread. I don't know much about TCGs, so it was a bit confusing reading the character descriptions ("upgrading 'Summons', 'Equip Arms', Beatdown tactics, Control). While I'm not exactly hooked either on playing these kinds of VNs (SC2VN as well, for that matter haha), I'd be interested to learn more about your idea and the characters.

It's good that you're taking time to develop the story, but when you do post character art, I'd be excited to see it! I think some character concepts would draw in people as well.

Thanks for replying guys. I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm freaking out, I just wanted some feed back and what you provided is invaluable. I'll get that glossary up today. Also let it be know that I am almost done writing the ending of the game. I have some of the beginning as well but I decided to take a tip from the Creepypasta Wiki and work from the ending back. Again I'm sorry.

It's all good, there tend to be more lurkers on this forum than anything, haha. Good luck!

Ahh this sounds cool~ There's been a lot of love for MOBAs in terms of VN topics (League, SC2 as far as I've seen?) but not many for TCG. I'm a huge fan of TCGs, I used to even watch shitty anime about TCGs LOL So I'm curious to see how it will turn out and also very excited to play it xD

Out of curiosity, will you be basing this on any currently existing TCG or all the cards and whatever will be original?
(Edit: Wait I just read the Glossary, I skipped reading that earlier since I didn't need to know the definitions of the terms so yeah ignore this question LOL)

I saw this the other day but couldn't reply at the time. Anyway, this sounds like a fun sort of thing! I love VNs that are like, from the point of something so simple. It has a lot of potential and I'm looking forward to it.

I don't play TCG but I do collect Pokemon cards! And watched Yu-gi-oh in the past... So I'm a little familiar with it. But I've never been to a tournament so this seems really exciting for me.

Thanks for being exited Windchimes and sicklesium and I never told you thanks for the good wishes and advice fleet and yetibutts. I hope I can make a product that lives up to your expectations.

I don't feel super great about this but I'm kinda putting this game on hold, well not really. It's more like I'm going to work on Children's Games and a series of smaller scale projects at once. The reason I'm doing this is to not only fatten my portfolio a bit seeing as how it currently has nothing in it (and seeing as how I'm an adult and want to write full time that's unacceptable) and I think it's generally better for the quality of Children's Games.

Speaking of "children's card game", is the overall tone of the story be Serious Business (as how TVTropes describe Yu-Gi-Oh anime), or it's a parody?
Designing the rules and cards of the trading card game is important, but you said it's a small-scale project so maybe there won't be any detailed duel scenes at all.
Regardless, the premise sounds promising to me.

LMAO before I stopped going to campus, TCG was on the roll. Especially in freshmen and junior, but there are some seniors and graduates as well who still hang out to play some in my major's canteen. Reading/watching YGO never really made me interested in playing some, more than I enjoyed the characters and interactions, so this VN would be interesting. I'll definitely download and play it once it's done.

Keep up the spirit!

(And if I start having ship-py feels please don't blame me lmao. I'm a sucker for bromance hints in shounen works.)

To answer your question SHiNKiROU it will be more on the serious side, or at least as serious as teenagers playing a national level tournament of a card game marketed to kids could be, there will be jokey elements. For example, how could I not poke fun at the kids who take the game and it's associated cartoon a bit too seriously because let's face it, everyone who grew up on these kinda games was like that at one point.